Any who plays MMORPGs more than occasionally knows that the most common problem plaguing long-time MMORPGs is the economy. Primarily, the issue is that there becomes a surplus of money in the system and as such money becomes less and less valuable in the game.

In a static economy system (where prices do not change to meet demand/surplus issues), this means that highlevel/longtime players each have about three kingdom's worth of money as pocket change.

In the now more common system where prices do change to fit supply and demand, this generally leads to highly inflated prices.

The third option, which is the most effective in my opinion, is the player run economy. This means that money is generally passed between players directly, instead of through NPCs. However, a true player run economy is the closest thing to anarchy (HrH, for example. Great game, but needed more direction and standards). Thus, most PREs (Player Run Economies) are built with an NPC infrastructure to facilitate the minting of new money with which to stimulate the economy.

As you can imagine, this still leads to the problem of a gross increase in the amount of money in the system.

To combat this, game designers use "money sinks", nifty things that are designed to draw money out of the system in return for a service. Examples include the ability to change one's appearance (hair styles, etc), participate in PvP activities, own a home, item storage, etc.

I'd like ideas and opinions on how to handle this problem. My own idea which I plan to implement is a lottery system. The prize is either an item or an amount of money. If it's money, there is a base value for the prize amount. Enough that it will entice players to buy tickets. Tickets cost an amount dependent upon the economy, of which half is put into the pot if the prize is money.

For example: In a Final Fantasy type MORPG there is a lottery held in the main city. The prize is 2000 gil and a ticket costs 200 gil (*note: figures are based off of FFXI from experience). 2000 gil is a high enough value that many players will buy one ticket, and 200 is a low enough value that many will buy more than one. Each ticket increases the pot by 100 gil. It requires 20 tickets to be sold in order to even out the cash flow into the system. Any more and it's a net negative cash flow (money leaving system).

Each ticket bought places the character's name on a list. The more your name appears, the more likely you will win.

The pot sits at 2000 + (100*100) = 12,000. Each of the first 12 people has a 4% chance of winning. The second set of 15 each has a 2% chance, and the 22 others have a 1% chance.

A grand total of 20,000 gil was used to buy tickets. 12,000 gil is being paid, leaving a net of 8,000 gil to leave the system.

On a true MMORPG, the numbers would be much higher still. On FFXI (the basis for my observations), tickets would be sold in Jeuno which has the largest player population at any given point in time. It could be expected that closer to 500 tickets would be sold in one day, with the same prize value and price of tickets. Change the prize to a base 5,000 gil and you'll get about 1,000 tickets sold a day. That's a net of 95,000 gil leaving the system per day!

Anyway, I'm just looking for a good MORPG economics disussion :P Fire away!

Anyway, I'm just looking for a good MORPG economics disussion :P Fire away!

There's always maintanence fees to sap away money which can scale based on the value of an item. Have durability on items so players have to periodically pay money to fix up used items. In a more economically driven game you can also just periodically tax players based on their net worth. This would also be an incentive for players not to horde lots of valuable items.

I've considered things such as fees and taxation and may include them. However, I have found that most implementations of such things are more annoying than useful. I do plan on a PRE based on city-states (similar to FFXI). Part of that plan is sales tax in each city. So, Haven may have a 1% sales tax whereas Freeport may have 10% sales tax.

Hmm, expanding on that, I could probably tie in the tax rate to the economic ebb and flow of a given city. Freeport has almost dropped off the face of the planet in terms of postive cash flow into the system, so it's sales tax will drop next week, and continue dropping weekly until balance is found. Due to the low tax rate in Haven, cash flow is at an all time high, so rates will rise.

The same goes for item decay. I've seen a lot of designers talk about it like it's the next holy grail of online gaming, but I've only really seen it appeal to hardcore gamers. Keep in mind that I consider FFXI a "hardcore" MMORPG in that is not designed for casual play. If you have less than an hour to play, don't bother (usually).

Play occurs in cycles on FFXI. EXP>MONEY>UPGRADE>EXP. Generally, each is mutually exclusive. Either you're levelling (EXP), making money, or upgrading your equipment. In about that order. You have to WORK to keep up with the rest of the game. Usually, the work is fun, but not always.

I want my games to be fun, regardless of your level of participation. Unless money with which to fix your degrading items comes at a rate similar to how fast they degrade while using them, it becomes an annoying hassle that takes away from the enjoyment of the game. Players have to stop doing what's fun to them (killing orcs, for example), to figure out some way to make money, and then fix their equipment to do what they want to do.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to this: I don't want there to be a "right" and a "wrong" choice when playing the game. Item decay and taxation of characters has the potential to form a "wrong" choice. A dead end where it would be more fun to suicide your character rather than claw your way out of the hole that's been dug. I spent all my money on new equipment. Being a new player and a casual one at that, I don't think to keep some in the bank. The inevitable happens: equipment break. Now I'm SOL unless the designer provided some way to make money without spending money, which leads to the original problem all over again.

That said, I think there are ways to incorporate item degradation without taking away from the causal player. For example, an item may have a minimum and a maximum rating for each of it's relavent attributes. A sword may have a DMG rating of 5 (3/10). This means that the sword currently has a DMG rating of 5 for terms of damage. If the sword is kept in disarray, it could drop to 3. It won't fall below 3. Taking this a step further, special abilities of weapons may require certain ratings to be maintained. A sword that causes poison may require a minimum rating of 5, and the chance of poison happening is based on the rating. Something like 5%/rating, min 5. At rating 5, the sword has a 25% chance of dealing poison. At 10, it has a 50% chance.

Hmm . . . now I need to figure out if I was talking more to myself or to Theodis. So much of the above is just stream of consciousness. I apologize for any difficulties in reading :P

I like the idea of flooding the market with useless junk for the rich and powerful to waste their money on. Status symbol items that aren't needed in anyway to play the game.

Another idea I like is removing money gain from tasks like killing NPC monsters or limiting the amount you can gain from them. Ie, you kill a frog, take it's body to the local Frogsmith and he'll give you 1 gold coin for it. He'll only accept 20 frogs from you a day however.
With that system it's still possible to get rich but it limits the casual money gain most MMORPGs seem to have. To get rich you'd have to take on monster hunting as a proper job. Going around every day killing several of each animal.

Another idea I like is removing money gain from tasks like killing NPC monsters or limiting the amount you can gain from them. Ie, you kill a frog, take it's body to the local Frogsmith and he'll give you 1 gold coin for it. He'll only accept 20 frogs from you a day however.
With that system it's still possible to get rich but it limits the casual money gain most MMORPGs seem to have. To get rich you'd have to take on monster hunting as a proper job. Going around every day killing several of each animal.

I agree, and this is something done quite well in FFXI. I know I keep coming back to that but I honestly think FFXI has one of the best economic models out there to date.

Non-sentient creatures wouldn't be carrying money on them. A rabbit, for example, has absolutely no use for a gold piece and wouldn't be carrying them around. An orc, on the other hand, would probably carry some around. Orcs understand the value of trade and currency, and therefore may carry some "civilized" coin around for the occasional barter with civilization.

Credit is another good way of sapping money out of a system. Offer credit for players at an adjustable interest rate depending on the economy.

~X

Explain please.

Do you mean having money lenders in the game? If so, what happens when a player takes out a large loan, spends it, and deletes their character? The money is in the system and leaving more slowly than before.

Well, you wouldn't give credit to players when they first join the game. They'd have to build a reputation, or some sort of credibility before lenders would loan them funds. And failing to repay the loan in a timely manner would result in not being able to get another loan until your credebility is fixed. In a PRE, you could limit this to only Merchants, or players with high value assets. Perhaps even have them put items or money down first before they can recieve a loan.

I like the idea of flooding the market with useless junk for the rich and powerful to waste their money on. Status symbol items that aren't needed in anyway to play the game.

Another idea I like is removing money gain from tasks like killing NPC monsters or limiting the amount you can gain from them. Ie, you kill a frog, take it's body to the local Frogsmith and he'll give you 1 gold coin for it. He'll only accept 20 frogs from you a day however.
With that system it's still possible to get rich but it limits the casual money gain most MMORPGs seem to have. To get rich you'd have to take on monster hunting as a proper job. Going around every day killing several of each animal.

I like the idea of getting money from monster corpses, but when you have to take every dingle frog to the frogsmith, it can get pretty tiresome.

I like the idea of getting money from monster corpses, but when you have to take every dingle frog to the frogsmith, it can get pretty tiresome.

Well, unless the corpse is really heavy, you should be able to carry many corpses at once. So you could kill 20 frogs, take them to the frogsmith, and sell all 20 to him at once(item stacking).

The frogsmith or equivalent should have its limits set by the local economy. If he can't sell frog parts, he won't be buying very many frog corpses. So if times are bad, he may only buy 5 frogs max per player, at possibly lower prices.

I think that Tibia has an AMAZINGLY well done economic system. If you go to Antica, a server that's probably about 4 years old, you can get a fire sword for what must now be a couple thousand gold. If you go to a week-old server, the fire swords (if they've even obtained any yet) will cost 50,000+.

It would take me hours to go on about every detail in Tibia's economy, but it's too wonderful. And, of course, death is a huge money sinker-- but not always. Here's an example, and a nice story:

Me and my friend had just finished a nice, yet extremely hard hunt at Ulderek's Rock-- a giant fortress created thousands of years ago by many orcs. The loot wasn't that great, but the return trip going back to Thais was: As we left, we were just walking along and chatting (Tibia was life-size yet still nowhere near Morrowind size maps), when I saw a woman's dead corpse just lying around. I ran forward to check out what she had, when a dragon popped up right next to it; you could tell what happened to her. Me being the valiant knight who blocked the dragon, my friend stayed back and shot arrows till it died. We checked the dragon, nothing much. But the dead woman had 2 thousand gold, a backpack full of ultimate healing runes, and a few other odds and ends that we enjoyed.

The moral of the story is that while death can be a money-sinker in Tibia by making them lose everything in their backpack (Thank God: Tibia's a game where gold is an item, that fits in your inventory just like a sword!), sometimes the corpse may rot before an innocent passerby gets the lucky loot, otherwise, woohoo for them!

I think that Tibia has an AMAZINGLY well done economic system. If you go to Antica, a server that's probably about 4 years old, you can get a fire sword for what must now be a couple thousand gold. If you go to a week-old server, the fire swords (if they've even obtained any yet) will cost 50,000+.

It would take me hours to go on about every detail in Tibia's economy, but it's too wonderful. And, of course, death is a huge money sinker-- but not always. Here's an example, and a nice story:

Me and my friend had just finished a nice, yet extremely hard hunt at Ulderek's Rock-- a giant fortress created thousands of years ago by many orcs. The loot wasn't that great, but the return trip going back to Thais was: As we left, we were just walking along and chatting (Tibia was life-size yet still nowhere near Morrowind size maps), when I saw a woman's dead corpse just lying around. I ran forward to check out what she had, when a dragon popped up right next to it; you could tell what happened to her. Me being the valiant knight who blocked the dragon, my friend stayed back and shot arrows till it died. We checked the dragon, nothing much. But the dead woman had 2 thousand gold, a backpack full of ultimate healing runes, and a few other odds and ends that we enjoyed.

The moral of the story is that while death can be a money-sinker in Tibia by making them lose everything in their backpack (Thank God: Tibia's a game where gold is an item, that fits in your inventory just like a sword!), sometimes the corpse may rot before an innocent passerby gets the lucky loot, otherwise, woohoo for them!

Intriguing, and I would like to hear more about their economy system if you don't mind sharing.

A couple points, however. The moneysink described here via death is a more advanced form of Everquest death. It has been tried, test, and proven to be more cumbersome and annoying to players than much else. It lead to corpse runs, which lead to people who had to leave at a given point in time being screwed because they couldn't run back to get their corpse.

I will never, ever have a system in any of my games with an "all or nothing" approach. Perhaps a certain number of random items will drop on the corpse, with the more valuable/rare items having a lesser chance of dropping. This includes gold, but if gold is a chosen item then the "rarity" is the percentage of gold dropped: 10%, 25%, 50%, etc.

I like the idea of getting money from monster corpses, but when you have to take every dingle frog to the frogsmith, it can get pretty tiresome.

Well, unless the corpse is really heavy, you should be able to carry many corpses at once. So you could kill 20 frogs, take them to the frogsmith, and sell all 20 to him at once(item stacking).

The frogsmith or equivalent should have its limits set by the local economy. If he can't sell frog parts, he won't be buying very many frog corpses. So if times are bad, he may only buy 5 frogs max per player, at possibly lower prices.

Exactly. In the system I'm currently working on your max inventory size is based on your strength. The stronger you are, the more items you can carry. Some items are "cumbersome", and they take up multiple "slots". Therefore, a desk may be a Cumbersome (4) item (taking up four inventory spaces).

Each inventory space can carry a stack of items. The size of the stack is determined by the item in question and your dexterity. This basically represents your ability to juggle and balance items, and how nimble you are at tying twine. Yes, this is not an entirely realistic approach. However, I believe that the game should be enjoyable over realistic.

Anyway, an item such as froghide would probably have a stack size of 15. So, a highly dextrous character could probably stack 20-25 of them, whereas a clutz would stack 10 or so. A strong and dextrous character could then carry several stacks of 20 hides. So, after an hour of frog hunting, you might have 10 stacks of hides (200). Assuming the frog tanner gives you 5 gold per hide, you stand to make 1,000 gold.

In Tibia, I'd be surprised at anyone who carries all of their rarest possessions and most gold with them when they attempt any form of hunting.

The depots in Tibia are widely used, and easily a center for trading and chatting. I had no idea why that woman actually carried 2k WITH her, while chasing/getting chased by a dragon.

Like you said, there are NPCs in Tibia who sort off start off the economy with simple goods. Also, NPCs tend to way overcharge items, then buy them back a tenth of the price. That's why all Rookgardians (beginners, they start on Rookgard) buy their rope (used to get OUT of holes; not having rope can get you in some bad predicaments) from other players, instead of greedy old Al Dee.

Also, most items of any real value are obtained from killing monsters, and most of those rare things have a very small chance for you to get one. For example, my level 32 knight Malloe hunts beholders at a swamp north of Thais not many people seem to find. I kill an average of 50 a day (back when I starved for powergaming[beholders aren't like monsters you can spam kill: they respawn slowly, only 2 spawn, and they're pretty tough]), and it takes me about a week to get a beholder shield, which I then cash in to an eager just-off-newbie-islander with a load of money they wanna spend.

But here's probably what really keeps the economy live and kicking: runes. Blank runes can be bought at any magic shop, and mages hold them in one of their hands, say the name of a spell they've been tought, and if they have the required mana, BOOM! They imprint the rune spell on the blank rune. Runes are handy, because they can be used anywhere. Some sorcerors make a backpack full of magic missile runes, then use them to hunt things like cyclops. When they get strong enough, sorcerors will make the one spell all mages live for: sudden death. This is a hard to make, ever-beloved spell that, as described by a priestess near the beholder swamp, "causes the enemy's heart to skip beats, or otherwise give them a sort of heart attack." Some sorcerors prefer to sit around, chat, and make runes all day for cash, and others buy them to hunt. This lets you decide whether you want a nice, communicative life, or a fun life filled with perils.

The druid's main rune is the one knights level 20+ depend upon. They can't live without these: ultimate healing runes. Knights can use them (if they've trained their magic SO MUCH that they can eventually use these runes) right in the middle of battle, to heal themselves a hefty bit of HP. This comes in handy in almost any situation, and thus keeps the economy rolling around:

Runescape had a thing where if you died, you were guaranteed to keep your three most expensive items (unless you were a PKer, which would put you at risk of losing everything for a minute or so).

My gripe about corpse decay and losing items is once it happens, what equipment are you going to use to get back to your corpse? Everything you had on you will be there, making it even harder to get there the second time. Then you've also got people who hunt around just to find corpses and, if the game is set up to allow it, people who run around and PK anyone they know is weaker just to steal their equipment and make money at the expense of everyone else.

Eventually, whenever I played Runescape I always kept everything but my three best pieces of equipment in the bank. I couldn't lose it, but the downside was that I couldn't use it either. And even more annoying is when you try to hunt for something, but not only do you lose it because of corpse dropping but you're then left at the mercy of other players who "might" help you out, or just pretend to so they can loot you. Eventually, I got turned away from playing it altogether because the risk of losing hard to obtain items was greater than whatever fun I could have just playing.

I like the idea of flooding the market with useless junk for the rich and powerful to waste their money on. Status symbol items that aren't needed in anyway to play the game.

Another idea I like is removing money gain from tasks like killing NPC monsters or limiting the amount you can gain from them. Ie, you kill a frog, take it's body to the local Frogsmith and he'll give you 1 gold coin for it. He'll only accept 20 frogs from you a day however.
With that system it's still possible to get rich but it limits the casual money gain most MMORPGs seem to have. To get rich you'd have to take on monster hunting as a proper job. Going around every day killing several of each animal.

Frogsmith, hahahahahha, omg, lmfao. You almost killed me with that one. That is funny as hell!

EDIT: Anyways, I take this on as idea for myself. Ive been playign with. When a player dies, and they are not in a guild (AKA PK) their body drops, with all their inventory on it. At which point the player is sent back to a certian town they last saved in.

They come back as ghosts, where nothing can hurt them, and they cannot attack anyone, and need to go back to their corpse. The corpse rots, but slowly, if you get to your corpse and its nothing but bones, youll have to be revived by a necromancer (which lowers your vital stats).

When your corpes rots, when its nothing but bones, your loot will hit the ground, otherwise itll stay in your body.

But if you are PK, your loot will automatilly hit the ground, letting anyone nab it, that includes your money.

Something else that may add a bit of flavor (but would probably also obfuscate things a bit more than you liked) would be to add differnt types of currency for different regions. Then, depending on the area that different players spent most of thier time, different players would be able to create supply and demand.

For example:

Bob hangs out in Smithville, where the Steel Chip is the currency of choice. Unfortunately, since Smithville is mostly an industrial place, he can't find an apothecary so he can buy potions of healing.

Jim loves the forests around Elfland, where they trade in pearl tokens and make killer magic potions and scrolls. Unfortunately, they are a little dainty on the weapons and armor (lets face it, elves would rather show skin than be protected).

Jim and Bob meet up, decide on an even trade of currency (or possibly goods), and go their separate ways.

Granted, this type of economy would take some stimulation to get started (if you didn't have a good player base), but after a little while it seems that it would flourish pretty well, and encourage all forms of trade.

The key to any stable environment is controlling input and output. Usually games have an infinite input of resources via monsters, but no comparable drain. Thus, resources accumulate and become less valuable as their scarcity decreases. This means relatively rare resources become worth more and more common ones. For example, if all monsters carry coin, but only the rarely spawning jackalope of doom carries the Super Sword of Supreme Slaying (TM) and then only 5% of the time, the sword will become worth obscene amounts of coin.

Money sinks are one way to help reduce accumulation, but if the supply is to steady, inflation will occur. Things like durability/item breakage also help thin out stockpiles. But again, if supply is plentiful.... It is a careful balancing act that requires planning and forethought.